JAMES BUCKHAH 




Class__B\/4 L 
Book ; 377 

Copyright N° 



COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



€$e heritage of JLtfe. 



Cije heritage of Hiit 



By 
JAMES BUCKHAM 




CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEWYORK: EATON AND MAINS 



311 



"Y of COWGREssf 
I wo Oowlcs fteceivatf 

11 m; 

r*S Wfffif £ n trv 

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COPYRIGHT, 1907 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 



Contents 

Foreword, 7 

The Discipline of Life, - - 11 

The Shining Side of Sorrow, - 28 

The Meaning of Death, - - 38 

The Joy of Life, - - - -55 

The Hallowed Commonplace, - 69 

The Value of Obstacles, - - 81 

Loye the Apex of Life, 90 

Eegeneration, - 100 

The Long Perspective, - - 113 



jfforetDDrtu 



To each and every soul life brings 
some heritage of good. It may not 
always be obvious good; it may not 
be the kind of good that lies upon 
the surface; but more and more, as 
life goes on, the devout spirit grows 
into the conviction that the all of life, 
the total result of its experiences, is 
good. 

We need to look for the hidden 
good, as well as the obvious good, in 
lif e. We need to establish the faith 
that everything that life brings us 
has some blessing in it; that ^here 
is good, not only in what at first 
7 



Foreword. 

seems good, but in what at first seems 
ill. God assigns us no lessons in the 
school of life that are not divinely 
worth the learning. If we can only 
get at the heart of them, their hidden 
meaning, let us be assured that all 
experiences are blest. 

It takes time, and a certain loving, 
loyal dwelling upon that great word 
Providence, to convince the soul that 
there is an essential and discoverable 
blessing in every one of God's deal- 
ings with it. But by-and-by, through 
loyalty of faith, through prayer's in- 
sight, through humble waiting for 
the message of God, the soul does 
perceive how each experience of life 
adjusts itself, intelligibly and inspir- 
ingly, to a Divine plan — God's plan 
for the spiritual refinement and de- 
velopment of the individual. 
8 



Foreword. 

There comes to the soul then a 
sweet, joyful, uplifting assurance of 
the eternal Tightness and goodness of 
things. We feel that "All 's well 
with the world" — our individual 
world, as well as the greater world 
whose bounds include humanity — be- 
cause God is in it. 

This is the most precious heritage 
that life can bring to a human soul 
— the perception, the conviction, that 
there is something that makes for 
good in every experience — in joy and 
in sorrow, in gain and in loss, in hope 
and in discouragement, in helps and 
in hindrances, in the humblings of 
moral weakness and the triumphs of 
moral strength. For by all these 
things God is testing us, and teach- 
ing us, and strengthening us, and 
bringing us nearer to such perfec- 
9 



Foreword. 

tion of character as is possible for 
us to attain. 

It is with the hope that the follow- 
ing pages may help, however imper- 
fectly, to make this great truth more 
clear, and more available for spir- 
itual comfort and encouragement, 
that this little volume is offered to the 
Christian public. 

Melrose, Mass. 



10 



C&e m&tiplim of Hffe. 

A student of insect life once 
found the curious, flask-shaped co- 
coon of an emperor moth, and kept 
it in her room in order that she might 
observe the emergence of the beauti- 
ful creature. At length, when 
nearly a year had passed, she dis- 
covered signs of the embryo's awak- 
ening. During a whole forenoon 
she watched the efforts of the moth 
to escape from its prison. There 
was just one narrow opening in the 
neck of the cocoon, through which 
the insect must force its way, an 
opening so greatly disproportionate 
to the size of the embryo that the 

struggle seemed to the watcher al- 
ii 



The Heritage of Life. 

most hopeless. When it had been 
protracted for hours her patience be- 
came exhausted, and her sympathy so 
roused that she seized a pair of 
scissors and snipped the confining 
threads, to make the exit of the em- 
bryo easy. Immediately the moth 
emerged, dragging a huge, swollen 
body and little, shriveled wings. "In 
vain/' says the observer, "I watched 
to see that marvelous process of ex- 
pansion in w r hich these wings, in the 
normal embryo, silently and swiftly 
develop before one's eyes; and as I 
traced the exquisite spots and mark- 
ings of divers colors which were all 
there in miniature, I longed to see 
these assume their due proportions, 
and the creature appear in all its 
perfect beauty, as it is, in truth, one 

of the loveliest of its kind. But I 
12 



The Discipline of Life. 

looked in vain. My false tenderness 
had proved its ruin. It never was 
anything but a stunted abortion, 
crawling painfully through that 
brief life which it should have spent 
flying through the air on rainbow 
wings." 

In artificially enlarging the pas- 
sage through which the insect was 
struggling to emerge, the observer 
had interfered with a provision of 
nature by which the fluids necessary 
to expansion and coloration are 
forced into the vessels of the in- 
sect's wings. These, in the case of 
the emperor moth, are less developed 
at the period of emergence from the 
chrysalis than are those of most other 
insects. The severe and prolonged 
struggle of emergence from its xo- 
coon is absolutely necessary to the 
13 



The Heritage of Life. 

emperor moth in order that it may 
realize its normal and beautiful de- 
velopment, its fullness of life. De- 
prived of this struggle, it must re- 
main a stunted and distorted crea- 
ture while it lives, crawling instead 
of flying, ugly instead of beautiful, 
pitifully cheated of its birthright, 
and condemned to a brief existence 

of helplessness and misery. 

* *• * # # 

Is not this one of those marvelous 
correspondences between the natural 
and spiritual worlds, by which we are 
taught the identity of the laws that 
govern both these great provinces of 
the Creator? The law of spiritual 
development — is it not the same in 
character and operation as the law 
disclosed by this experiment in the 

life-history of the emperor moth? 

14 



The Discipline or Life. 

The soul, too, must have its struggle 
with environment, with the trying 
conditions of life, in order that it 
may emerge perfected and beauti- 
fied, its celestial wings expanded and 
made radiant by the life-currents 
which only stress and suffering can 
cause to flow through them. That 
is the Divine, the inevitable condi- 
tion of soul-growth. "No sparing 
men the process," as Browning says. 
Just as surely as the soul is cheated 
of its struggle, deprived of its oppor- 
tunity of meeting and overcoming 
the hard conditions of life, just so 
surely it loses its birthright of Divine 
expansion and beauty, of develop- 
ment into the likeness of Christ's 
perfect humanity. 

May we not see, then, that it i^ a 
false benevolence, a cruel and harm- 
15 



The Heritage of Life. 

ful interference with the develop- 
ment of any soul, one's own or an- 
other's, to cut for it the God-ap- 
pointed fibers of discipline, that it 
may pass through them without that 
struggle that spreads and irradiates 
for the spirit its celestial wings? 
Ah! the misguided charity that 
would lift from another's shoulders 
the burden that would steady him 
through life, that would develop and 
strengthen him, and make him eter- 
nally more manly and more angelic! 
There are burdens that should be 
shared; there are even burdens that 
should be entirely borne for one by 
others ; but there are no spiritual bur- 
dens that the soul is called upon to 
bear as tests and disciplines, which 
it should be denied the gracious privi- 
lege of bearing. 

16 



The Discipline of Life. 

"To suffer is divine/ 5 says Whit- 
tier. Yes, divine in its influence and 
divine in its result. The struggle of 
the soul is a struggle of redemption, 
a struggle upward and Godward. 
It is the struggle of spiritual evolu- 
tion. In no other way can the soul 
attain fullness of life, emancipation 
from the finite, and communion and 
fellowship with God. 

11 Then welcome each rebuff 

That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but 
go! 
Be our joys three parts pain ! 
Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never 
grudge the throe." 

***** 

Some two or three centuries ago, 
there lived in Italy an artist who was 
ambitious to leave behind him an en- 
2 17 



The Heritage of Life. 

during name and fame; but, as time 
went on and youth and early man- 
hood vanished, he became aware that 
his work was not rising above the 
even level of excellence which it had 
attained in his first efforts. Try as 
hard as he might, he could not, at 
forty-five, paint a picture that ex- 
celled in strength or originality or 
significance the work which he had 
produced at twenty-five. This greatly 
troubled him, and finally he went to 
a famous master in his own art and 
begged to be told, if it were possible, 
the secret of his failure to grow. "I 
have worked hard," he cried. "My 
aim has been single and my toil 
ceaseless. Yet I am no nearer 
achieving greatness as an artist than 
I was in my youth. Tell me the 
reason why/' 

18 



The Discipline of Life. 

"Since thou wouldst know the very- 
truth," was the great artist's reply, 
"I will give it in the fewest words. 
Thou art rich, and livest at ease and 
apart. Thou hast never known the 
discipline of life. Distribute thy 
wealth among the poor. Go forth 
and suffer with those who suffer, and 
toil with those who toil by a divine 
necessity. Follow the way of the 
cross, and thou wilt enter into the 
power of that art whose fittest sym- 
bol is the cross." 

Wise words of the wise master! 
Discipline and suffering are, indeed, 
the sources of vital power. Out of 
them spring the aesthetics as well as 
the ethics of life. If any of us are 
ambitious to do original, creative 
work we must address ourselves to 
it in a mood of strong and quick 
19 



The Heritage of Life. 

feeling- — feeling that is distinctly 
personal and not vicarious; and in 
order to become masters of that 
strong emotion which lies at the basis 
of all art, we must be genuine par- 
ticipants in the discipline of life, in 
its deep sufferings as well as its ex- 
alting joys, in its sorest trials as well 
as its gladdest triumphs. 

Not long ago one of our young 
American writers lost her father and 
her elder brother by the same sudden 
and terrible disease. The support of 
an invalid mother and of four 
younger brothers and sisters fell 
upon her, and she set herself to 
the task with undaunted faith and 
courage. From that day began her 
vital power as a writer. She derived 
that strength out of her hard contact 
with life which the fabled Antaeus is 
20 



The Discipline of Life. 

said to have received from mother 
earth every time he was flung upon 
it. Her stories displayed a nobility 
of conception, an intensity of feel- 
ing, a loftiness of tone, which they 
had never before shown. Her very 
vocabulary was enriched and quick- 
ened by suffering. She entered 
bravely into the way of the cross, 
and the crown of the matured and 
successful artist was her reward. 

Is it not noticeable how the griefs 
of the world make up almost all of 
its great literature and art and 
music? How true the words of that 
brave toiler and singer, George Al- 
fred Townsend: 

" All our art is a cross, 
And our gospel but sorrow and loss ! " 

The stories, and the poems, and the 

pictures, and the songs that melt us 

21 



The Heritage of Life. 

to tears are the works of art round 
which men and women wilt forever 
twine the immortelles of fame. We 
are all traveling heavenward by the 
way of the cross, and when some 
fellow-pilgrim, to whom God has 
granted the gift of expression, comes 
down into our individual experience 
of pain and loss and denial, and not 
only expresses all we feel, but in- 
terprets all we feel, first in words 
tremulous with emotion, and then 
ringing with hope and faith, how can 
humanity let such a revelation and 
such a message die? It is too vital, 
too immortal in its very essence, to 
be forgotten. It is thus that art per- 
fects and perpetuates itself, adding 
to the great essentials of insight and 
sympathy the graceful charm of 
cultivated expression. 
22 



The Discipline of Life. 

Art always needs for its perfect- 
ing the emphasis and sanction of life. 
We can not get at the heart of 
humanity, either in creative or inter- 
pretative work, unless we know 
through personal experience what it 
is to struggle and to wait, to suff er 
and to lose, to feel the going over of 
the great billows and the unsealing 
of the fountains of tears, and yet, in 
all, to look up with that unshaken 
and abiding faith which is able to 
say, "Thy will, O God, not mine, be 
done!" 

jjt Ak AJ£ Mfc ij£ 

In one of the famous lace-shops 
of Brussels there are certain retired 
rooms devoted to the spinning of the 
finest and most delicate lace patterns. 
These rooms are altogether dark- 
ened, save for the light from one 
23 



The Heritage of Life. 

very small window falling directly 
upon the pattern. There is only one 
spinner in the room, and he sits 
where the narrow stream of light 
falls upon the threads that he is 
weaving. "Thus," you are told by 
your guide, "do we secure our choic- 
est products. Lace is always more 
delicately and beautifully woven 
when the worker himself is in the 
dark, and only his pattern is in the 
light." 

Does not the same beautiful and 
mysterious result appear in work of 
any kind, when surrounding shadows 
compel the toiler to fix his attention 
solely upon the task in hand — the 
task upon which falls the concen- 
trated light of life? When a soul 
finds itself shut in by disappoint- 
ments, trials, bereavements, disci- 
24 



The Discipline of Life. 

plines, or physical limitations, to its 
divinely appointed task, the one thing 
it is best fitted to do or to teach in 
this world, how marvelously the pat- 
tern is wrought! What new power 
and beauty appear in both work and 
character! That one small window 
through which falls the light of 
heaven full upon our task is, how 
often, the essential condition of high- 
est achievement! 

Lives that have been hitherto full 
of divided interest, of scattered en- 
thusiasms and dissipated energies, 
often become rarely and beautifully 
concentrated by trials. As the shad- 
ows shut in around the worker, his 
eyes seek more steadily and earnestly 
the pattern that has been given him 
to weave. The interest of life grows 
more and more concentrated and in- 
35 



The Heritage of Life. 

tense. The thoughts and desires be- 
come fixed upon that which alone can 
now yield satisfaction to the soul. 
There is an abandonment, a throw- 
ing of the entire nature into the per- 
formance of one's highest function, 
that insures noblest results. Milton 
blind, Bunyan and Defoe in prison, 
Franklin penniless, Hawthorne a 
victim of temperamental loneliness, 
Luther banished, — all these are ex- 
amples of concentration of native 
power through trial. Biography is 
full of instances of encompassing 
shadow intensifying the light of pur- 
pose upon the soul's true mission. 

& & & & & 

vjv y^ vjv yjv /i* 

In truth, the disciplines of life, 
rightly interpreted, are God's eman- 
cipators of the soul to higher, wider, 
more Christlike uses. To cherish the 
26 



The Discipline of Life. 

bitterness of any is to deny and 
thwart the will and purpose of God; 
but to take it, if it comes, and when 
it comes, as a holy messenger, bring- 
ing from God a commission to 
greater Christian usefulness and 
helpfulness, that is noble, that is 
Christlike; and great is the joy of 
the redeemed over every new minis- 
trant who goes forth out of that 
stern school, with eyes washed by 
tears and hands made gentle and 
willing by the touch of pain. 



27 



€^e fitting ^>f&e of ^>owoto* 

It is no mere pleasing generality 
to say that everything has its bright 
side. It is true in a very practical 
sense of many apparently unfortu- 
nate things. This is a vital conclu- 
sion from experience — a lesson which 
we who have learned it are divinely 
commissioned to teach to others. 
Even sorrow has its bright side. For 
it is a blessed fact that no event in 
personal history, if rightly inter- 
preted and rightly used, can fail to 
add some higher satisfaction, some 
profounder peace and happiness, to 
the life we are living here on earth. 

Sorrow's bright side — what is it, 

then? Well, in the first place, there 

28 



The Shining Side of Sorrow. 

is the almost invariable betterment of 
character. It is very seldom indeed 
that a great sorrow does not improve 
the quality of a human life, does 
not refine and cleanse and regulate 
and, to some extent, transform it. 
There is at first, to be sure, a period 
of stormfulness, of turbulence, of 
strong reaction and protest, like the 
beating of waves against the rocks. 
But after that comparatively brief 
period of natural reaction and turbu- 
lence, there comes to the sane, rea- 
sonable, and especially the religious 
soul a period of wonderful clarify- 
ing and calm, of spiritual elevation 
and moral strengthening. And as 
the weeks and months go by, this 
refinement and regeneration of the 
soul through sorrow crystallizes iitfo 
character, and the man becomes, un- 
29 



The Heritage of Life. 

consciously perhaps, stronger and 
better because of the storm that has 
so stirred the depths of his being. 
I doubt if any Christian would dis- 
pute for a moment the assertion that 
the spiritual manhood of the race as 
a whole, its moral goodness, its char- 
acter-level, would be infinitely low- 
ered, if sorrow were to be stricken 
out of our lives altogether. 

And so, as the individual reviews 
his past life, he can not help admit- 
ting that it has been chiefly his sor- 
rows that have lifted him up to higher 
moral and spiritual planes. Is it not 
always, as the inspired hymnist sang, 

" Out of my stony griefs 
Bethel I'll raise?" 

Yes, it is sorrow that exalts char- 
acter, that promotes and strengthens 
30 



The Shining Side of Sorrow. 

every spiritual grace. And surely 
this is one of the largest possible 
causes for rejoicing, for gratitude, 
for peace of mind and heart. If a 
noble result like this fails to gladden 
any human soul, then that soul must 
be singularly deadened and abased. 
It is not quick to the things that 
ought to rejoice, and do rejoice, 
spirits of the highest order. 

Then, there is another gleam from 
the bright side of sorrow — its mar- 
velous opening of the fountains of 
human sympathy. Truly, it is a 
beautiful and touching thing, this 
reverent and tender and gentle and 
brotherly human response to the cry 
of suffering, whether it be physical 
or spiritual. Let any child of God 

be in trouble, anywhere, and how al- 
31 



The Heritage of Life. 

most always there is some other child 
of God near at hand to help and 
comfort. Men lavish themselves — 
the best they are and have — upon 
other men who are in piteous neces- 
sity. There are few men so degraded 
as to be insensible to an appeal for 
help. And so in sorrow one discovers 
such sweet, deep joy of friends, of 
helpers. One is privileged to make 
such a large draft upon the fund of 
human sympathy that carries us 
through so many moral crises. "I 
never knew, 5 ' cried one who had been 
bereaved, "that I had so many and 
such dear, true friends!" It is a 
sweet and joyful revelation of the 
solidarity of the race ii^L love, that one 
often gets in the midst of crushing 
sorrow. And, as the shadow lifts a 

little from one's life with the pass- 
32 



The Shining Side of Sorrow. 

ing of time, how gladly one clings 
to this new revelation of the warm 
friendliness of one's kind! 

Here, then, is one outlook, and a 
broad and beautiful one, into the 
Divine purpose. Sorrow is essential 
to the opening of those heart-foun- 
tains which flow out to humanity. 
The more private fountains of love 
for nearest and dearest — it is not 
enough that these should flow freely 
and sweetly in order that life may 
give forth all that is in it. Some- 
thing more is needed, something 
more than kin-love and blood-affec- 
tion, that the human soul may have 
full expression. There needs to be 
a Christlike expansion of heart, that 
will take in humanity and love it and 
minister to it. This does not neces- 
sarily imply missionary zeal or^ de- 
3 33 



The Heritage of Life. 

votement, in the strict sense, nor does 
it require open enlistment in the 
service of philanthropy or charity. 
But it does mean such a warming 
and expanding of the heart toward 
our f ellowmen that we shall be drawn 
to them in their troubles and their 
needs, and shall freely and gladly 
give of our resources of sympathy 
and help to make their burdens 
lighter. 

What experience in life opens the 
way to this loving-kindness like per- 
sonal suffering? Is there, indeed, 
any other way for a comparatively 
cold, selfish, indifferent heart to be 
born again into the gracious life of 
brotherhood? If we ourselves do not 
suffer, can we so much as understand 
the suffering of others, to say noth- 
ing of knowing how to minister to it? 
34 



The Shining Side of Sorrow. 

Truly, God does touch us with grief 
and trouble that we may be enabled 
to touch others with love. It is His 
way of calling us out of the narrow- 
ness of the self-centered life into the 
breadth and largeness and Christlike- 
ness of the life of brotherhood and 
ministry. Suffering of all kinds 
should be taken by us, not as a shut- 
ting in, but as a calling out. It is 
not — or, at any rate, it ought not to 
be — a paralyzing and narrowing ex- 
perience, but rather one that stimu- 
lates and broadens. If it shuts the 
door to a quiet, sweet, personal hap- 
piness, on the one hand, does it not 
open wide, on the other hand, a door 
to large and increasing blessedness in 
the service of others? 

alt Alt Mg, \|t 4Ll — \ 



35 



The Heritage of Life. 

Another hidden and unsuspected 
source of joy in the midst of sorrow 
is the wonderful way in which sorrow 
opens up the Bible. There is no com- 
mentary that was ever written, no 
science, no learning, no profound ex- 
position, that can open up this grand 
old Bible of ours like the strange 
touch of this finger of sorrow. In 
the midst of our bitter suffering we 
turn to the Word of God — and 
suddenly those familiar pages are 
illumined. A marvelous light of 
interpretation streams upon them. 
They disclose, as it were, new truths, 
new promises, raised in letters of 
gold. No one can read all there is 
in his Bible who has not suffered. 
There are Scripture meanings that 
must be hidden until one has known 

what it is to suffer. But after sor- 
36 



The Shining Side of Sorrow. 

row comes, the whole Bible seems to 
glow with significance. It becomes 
a thousand times more real, more 
vital, more pregnant than it ever 
seemed to us before. We can not 
only read the promises then as we 
never read them before, but we can 
take hold upon them and appropriate 
them. Is not this something to be 
thankful for? Is it not a great and 
abiding source of joy? Thank God 
for these stars of Bible truth that 
shine out only in the night of human 
sorrow! 



37 



C^e jfteaning of &>zatty 

Until Christianity came, there 
was no place in any of the religions 
of the world for death. Here was 
this great, significant, awful fact, 
recognized, to be sure, but unex- 
plained in the message of any pagan 
religion to humanity. Or, if an ex- 
planation were attempted, it was such 
a hopeless, fatuous, illusory, and un- 
satisfying one that the human heart 
felt impelled to reject it. The phi- 
losophies and religions of the ancient 
world beat helplessly against that 
stern reality of death, and fell back 
broken and confused. There seemed 
no other way than to count it as the 
38 



The Meaning of Death. 

great, the final mystery, beyond 
which lay either nothing, the eternal 
blank of personal annihilation, or 
else such a shadowy, wailing, dolor- 
ously reminiscent existence as were 
infinitely worse than ceasing to be. 
To this incompleteness of revela- 
tion, to this utter perplexity of 
thought, came Christianity with its 
marvelous, its soul-convincing, its in- 
effably sweet and beautiful concep- 
tion of the place of death in the 
Divine plan. As if a dark curtain 
had been suddenly snatched from be- 
fore a clear-shining light, mankind 
saw in the twinkling of an eye the 
revealed mystery of death. How in- 
dubitable, how all-sufficient, how 
penetratingly glad and glorious was 
the revelation! There must h&ve 
been many a soul that said to itself 
39 



The Heritage of Life. 

then: "Why has it never come to 
me before that this might be the 
meaning of death? — an explanation 
so simple, so reasonable, so perfectly 
in accord with my own consciousness 
and inward conviction? Strange that 
no one in the world, until this Re- 
vealer came, taught that death is the 
gateway to a grander and sweeter 
and nobler existence, for which this 
life simply serves as a preparation." 
And indeed it would seem strange, 
if one did not remember that all 
great revelations and discoveries 
bear, as if it were a divine stamp of 
genuineness, the sanction of sim- 
plicity. Every one, when disclosed, 
seems the first thing the puzzled 
mind, the bewildered soul, should 
have hit upon in its searching; and 
yet it is always the last! 
40 



The Meaning of Death. 

The Christian explanation of 
death was the final, the all-sufficient 
explanation. After that radiant 
Easter revelation, the world searched 
and sorrowed no more for light. 
Light was all about it, and within it, 
and above it. There was no more 
room for darkness anywhere — not a 
corner of the universe where a shadow 
of that ancient mystery of death 
could lurk. 

No wonder that the dominance of 
that new religion in the world was 
assured from the hour when Christ 
rose from the grave. This was the 
one supreme knowledge for which 
humanity had been longing since the 
days of the patriarchs — the knowl- 
edge that personal consciousness, 
that the essential life of man, did itot 

end with the grave, but bridged it 

41 



The Heritage of Life. 

like a beam of light. Since the dawn 
of that memorable Easter morning 
on the hills about Jerusalem, the light 
that then came into the troubled soul 
of humanity has not ceased to spread 
throughout the waiting world, nor 
will it cease until its message of joy 
has shined into every human soul, and 
all hearts and all voices shall join in 
swelling the universal Easter hymn. 

2k-ik.2k.zk. ik. 

?!e "?t? v[e "ifr yf* 

Is it not suggestive that the poet 
speaks of the medium of separation 
between earth and heaven as a veil? 
Only the thinnest, filmiest barrier in- 
tervenes between this life and that 
other life, to whose borders we ap- 
proach so closely every day. True, 
we can not penetrate this veil by 
sight, neither can we remove it or 
even lift it; but what is true of a 
42 



The Meaning of Death. 

material veil or curtain is also true 
of this immaterial fabric, that life, 
motion, energy, contact on the other 
side, are reported in undulations 
which are plainly perceptible on this 
side. Heaven is so near to us that 
we are getting intimations of it all 
the time, distinct wave-motions in the 
separating veil, that none but the 
narrowest materialism can refuse to 
take into account. In numberless 
ways the truly spiritual nature feels 
the nearness of heaven and detects 
the stirrings of that other life. Some 
of these intuitions and intimations are 
too fine, delicate, and evanescent to 
be caught and expressed in words at 
all; others are reported in poems, ser- 
mons, or other religious writings, so 
vividly and sweetly that they are un- 
derstood by thousands who have re- 
43 



The Heritage of Life. 

ceived the same intimations, but have 
never been able to put them into 
speech. 

There are times when we draw 
very near to the veil that separates 
earth from heaven — times when we 
feel with peculiar distinctness, not 
only the reality, but the vital closeness 
of the lif e that is stirring on the other 
side of the curtain. The passing of 
a loved one from earth is one of 
these occasions. How that delicate, 
sensitive medium of separation be- 
tween the life that now is and the 
life that is to come vibrates and un- 
dulates with the passage and the lin- 
gering near of the spirit that is so 
closely bound by love's ties to our 
own ! Say what the materialists may, 
there is for the Christian a distinct 
consciousness of heaven at the mo- 
44 



The Meaning of Death. 

ment when a dear one enters it. The 
veil is not rent or lifted so that we 
may see through it, but it is stirred 
as by the touch of angel garments, 
and we know that our loved one has 
not passed far away from us, but is 
there within reach of a hand-clasp, 
if only our hand of flesh could pene- 
trate the curtain of the invisible. 

In moments of great spiritual ex- 
altation also there is a stirring of the 
veil, and we almost feel the movings 
of the heavenly airs responsive to our 
longings and aspirations. Trouble, 
too, brings a vivid sense of heaven's 
nearness. The Christian's agonized 
prayer is like a touching of the veil 
or curtain with the bowed forehead, 
so that the undulation of that great 
desire is borne to the very presence- 
chamber of God. Anj^hing that 
45 



The Heritage of Life. 

deeply moves and strongly accentu- 
ates the spiritual nature, subordinat- 
ing what is material in us, brings us 
very close to the veil that is stirring 
with the intenser and sweeter life of 
heaven. We feel heaven's nearness 
whenever we feel anything most 
deeply and spiritually. 

It will not be a far journey when, 
one by one, we pass out of the pres- 
ent life into that other life so closely 
touching earth's. "In a bound, in a 
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 
in the throb of a pulse, in the flash 
of a thought, we may start into dis- 
embodied spirits." 

4& Ste & ^& $c 

Here is a mother whom death has 

deprived of a dearly loved child. 

How silent, how desolate the house, 

now that the little feet go running 
46 



The Meaning of Death. 

hither and thither no more, and the 
childish voice is hushed! The very 
sunlight falling upon the carpet 
where the little one played, seems to 
have lost its brightness, and the 
mother can scarcely bear to look at 
the box where the broken toys are 
lying. She thinks that she has given 
up her child, that God has utterly 
taken it away from her, and her 
faith is sorely tried. She can not un- 
derstand. She cries out, with the 
stricken patriarch, "O God, my days 
are past, my purposes are broken off, 
even the thoughts of my heart!" It 
seems as if life had no more value, 
no more meaning for her. But the 
days pass, and gradually she begins 
to think of her child as a waiting, 
hovering angel — hers still, and God's 

— only lovelier and sweeter and hap- 

47 



The Heritage of Life. 

pier than it ever was while on earth. 
The angel-child is ever with her, 
sustaining, purifying, uplifting. 
Heaven, too, seems nearer and 
dearer and more real than ever in 
the days of her earthly happiness. 
She has escaped that temporal joy 
which so often snares the soul and 
keeps it from soaring toward the 
purer air. 

And now also that yearning heart, 
which was once bound up in the wel- 
fare of a single child, goes out in 
a great flood of tenderness and sym- 
pathy toward all little ones every- 
where, toward all the helpless and 
suffering and unmothered children 
of God. She becomes a Saint Agnes, 
a child-lover and child-protector. 
And over all her aspirations, devo- 



48 



The Meaning of Death. 

tions, philanthropies, hovers that 
child-angel whom she once thought 
God had taken away from her. Now 
indeed she sees a new and larger 
meaning in life, and instead of for- 
feited days, instead of broken pur- 
poses, the future stretches before her, 
rich in opportunities, inconceivably 
full of meaning and joy. Then she 
knows that there is a forsaking which 
is not giving up. What has Christ 
asked her to forsake? Only the care 
of the casket of a soul- jewel. Has 
she not the jewel still, and is it not 
a thousand times brighter and purer 
than it would have been had it re- 
mained upon the earth? And by- 
and-by she shall possess it with 
heaven's completeness. "He can not 
come to me, but I shall go to him," 



49 



The Heritage of Life. 

is her exulting cry. And she shall 
go to her child; she shall receive an 
hundred-fold portion of love. 

fS/> <l£. *]£. ik. ^ 

Vf! VfC 7[? TfT TTf 

Two gentlemen were conversing, 
when mention chanced to be made of 
a certain Western city. "I have a 
warm and almost affectionate inter- 
est in that community/' said one of 
them, "although I have never been 
there. The dearest friend I have in 
the world, outside my own family, 

has recently moved to T , after 

having been my next-door neighbor 
for more than twenty years. Until 
he took up his residence there, I had 
not the least interest in the city or 
its people. Indeed, I thought, from 
what I had read, that it must be a 
decidedly uninteresting and prosaic 

place to live in. Now my whole con- 
50 



The Meaning or Death. 

ception of T , and my feelings 

toward it, are changed. I look 
eagerly for items concerning it in the 
newspapers. I try to form vivid pic- 
tures of it from my friend's letters, 
and delight in imagining how the city 
and surrounding country must look; 
and I am eagerly awaiting the time 
when I can make a trip thither, and 
see for myself. Is it not strange 
what a new aspect the presence of 
one we love will give to a place for 
which we have hitherto cared nothing, 
or which we may even have disliked?" 
There is another city, not of earth, 
to which our dear ones go, never to 
return to the community of which we 
still form a part. And how their de- 
parture to that distant city hallows 
and endears and beautifies and ac- 
tualizes it to us! The whole concep- 
51 



The Heritage of Life. 

tion of heaven, of the life beyond, 
changes when we can look out across 
the separating space and time, and 
say, "There dwells my loved one." 
How real becomes the city, which was 
formerly but a name! We love to 
sit down and fancy how it looks — 
the shining streets; the light that is 
not of the sun, but diffused every- 
where and always with softened 
glory from the presence of God; 
the surrounding country (for we 
know that there must be country in . 
such a beautiful place), lofty hills, 
and green valleys, and still, winding 
streams. The city has become pre- 
cious and endeared to us, because 
among its myriad inhabitants is one 
whose hand we held when he was go- 
ing away to be a citizen there. 

This is one of the Easter signifi- 
52 



The Meaning of Death. 

cances of death, that, through it, God 
is transferring our affections, our 
longings, our hopes, our plans, from 
earth to heaven — from the tenting- 
place to the dwelling-place, from the 
dark valley of preparation to the 
shining heights of eternal realization. 
He weans us over, as it were, from 
earth to heaven, by taking our loved 
ones to Himself, and leading after 
them our hearts' desires and our sanc- 
tified imaginations and hopes. All 
the beauties and glories of the apoca- 
lyptic vision might make no appeal 
to us, satisfied as we are with this 
earth where our loved ones dwell, if 
God did not endear to us the city 
which is to be our eternal home, by 
calling some of our cherished ones to 
dwell there. Then, immediately, bur 

longings go out to it, we dream of 
53 



The Heritage of Life. 

it, we hope for it, we live so as to 
be more fit for it. 

Blessed is the soul that interprets 
the death of loved ones, not as a tak- 
ing away, but as a taking up, a set- 
ting forward, a transfiguration, an 
exaltation! They have simply gone 
to be with God and Christ our Re- 
deemer in the beautiful city whither 
we are all bound, and whither the 
longest life will bring us sooner than 
we realize. 



54 



C^e 3|o? of Miz. 

To be happy is the native prerog- 
ative of every child of God. Our 
Heavenly Father has made us all to 
be knowers of joy. It was His inten- 
tion, and it is ever His will, that the 
human spirit should live and expand 
in the sunshine, just as a flower does. 
To speak of this world as necessarily 
a sad and gloomy place, a "vale of 
tears," an "abode of sorrow," is to 
interpret unfairly the evident inten- 
tion of God. God has made His chil- 
dren exquisitely susceptible to joy, 
and has placed them in an environ- 
ment marvelously contrived to min- 
ister to their happiness. If any soul 
55 



The Heritage of Life. 

is not happy, it is because that sou. 
has in some way missed or avoided 
the purpose of God. Its unhappi- 
ness is the result either of its own 
mistake or its own deliberate inter- 
pretation and use of life. God never 
intended or planned that it should be 
unhappy. Something has interfered 
to defeat His beneficent purpose. 
What is it? 

The most frequent source of hu- 
man unhappiness is the overlooking 
of the nearness of joy. Here at our 
feet lie the springs of every-day and 
perpetual happiness, but we gaze far 
beyond them in our search for the 
sources of joy. 

Joy, the kind of joy that lasts 
and satisfies, is always near at hand; 
it is the daily bread and wine of the 

soul. Those who seek it far away 

56 



The Joy of Life. 

never find it, because they are con- 
stantly leaving it behind them. It is 
the habitual overlooking of the dis- 
contented spirit that robs it of its 
rightful daily portion of joy in this 
world. 

It is so easily possible to be con- 
tinually happy in little things — so- 
called "little" things, but what we 
mean when we say "little" is simply 
"constant." There is not a soul, liv- 
ing under average conditions in this 
world, that does not enjoy a sufficient 
portion of these constant blessings to 
make it always glad. There are, to 
begin with, the sweet functions of 
life — physical life; and how sweet 
they are it needs only a week's sick- 
ness or starvation or crippling to 
demonstrate. Or, even if some paH 

of these vital functions is lost, there 

57 



The Heritage of Life. 

are close at hand other ministrants of 
happiness. There is the power of ra- 
tional thought. Have you ever real- 
ized what an unspeakably happy, 
blessed thing it is to be sane instead 
of insane? Sit for but a single hour 
with a person whose mind is unbal- 
anced, and who is constantly imagin- 
ing the most abnormal and terrible 
and pitiful things, and then come out 
into the sunshine of your own ration- 
ality, and say, if you can, that there 
is nothing to be particularly thankful 
for in mere sanity of mind. 

Then there is love — every-day love, 
home-love, friend-love, the love and 
kindness and companionable feeling 
of one's fellow-mortals. How con- 
stant, how common the experience, 
yet how ineffably blessed! Daily af- 
fection, daily ministry — how sweet, 
58 



The Joy of Life. 

how lovely, how precious ! And shall 
we be forever looking beyond these 
things for the joy of life? God help 
us to see that the joy of life is very 
near, so near that we can not breathe 
or move without being in constant 
touch with it. These sweet, whole- 
some delights of physical existence; 
health, food, sound functions, sanity; 
human love and kindness; congenial 
work, which is like the track to the 
locomotive; the simple pleasures and 
recreations possible to the poorest 
and humblest of us; the good book; 
the sweet strain of music; the snatch 
of pleasant conversation; the hour of 
peaceful, uplifting worship; the ca- 
ress of a child; the rapture of doing 
good, — how many are the humble, 
simple, wise ways of being hap^y! 

In spite of its admixture of sor- 

59 



The Heritage of Life. 

row, human life may be very blessed, 
if we do not overlook the nearness of 
joy. Sorrow must be; we can not 
avoid that, but sorrow is a very dif- 
ferent thing from unhappiness. Sor- 
row is positive; unhappiness is nega- 
tive. Sorrow is necessary; unhappi- 
ness is unnecessary. Sorrow is the 
wholesome bitter of life ; unhappiness 
is its nauseating insipidity. God 
sends sorrow for our bettering; man 
makes unhappiness for his own tor- 
menting and demoralizing. It is no 
human fault to know sorrow; but it 
is a shame for a life to be clouded and 
deteriorated by unhappiness. 

The normal, the wholesome, the 
noble thing for every soul is, to keep 
in grateful touch with its blessings 
and the Giver of them, however sim- 
ple and humble the blessings may be ; 
60 



The Joy of Life. 

to be reverently mindful of God's 
constant goodness and the nearness 
and inseparableness of human joy. 
We can not all be great, or heroic, or 
even fortune- favored, but we can all 
be happy and thankful ; and the path 
of grateful happiness is one of the 
straightest of those that lead to 
heaven's gate. 

■& "5f\ 3& 3i£ ■& 

Who has not sometimes felt that 
the mere joy of life, when it springs 
from innocent and sufficient sources, 
is in itself a justification and a reward 
of existence? There are times, I am 
sure, when the best and most unself- 
ish spirits feel toward joy, past or 
present, as if there were something 
redeeming about it, as if to have 
experienced it were in some sort a 

pledge of immortality, of personal 

61 



The Heritage of Life. 

salvation. This feeling is not always 
distinct, not always reducible by the 
mind to a conviction of a blessed per- 
sonal immortality ; yet there is a thrill 
about it, a great and deep rapture, 
that is not easily explainable as a 
mere result of this hour's or this 
day's happiness. That haunting 
sense of having received some fore- 
taste of immortal joy in any deep, 
pure, earthly happiness, is not an hal- 
lucination. It means something, and 
is not its meaning this: that the con- 
dition of mind and soul in which one 
experiences a pure, exquisite, utterly 
satisfying human joy is a condition 
in which one must be in harmony 
with God, and therefore of one spirit 
with the redeemed? 

Such a great and deep-seeing soul 

as Phillips Brooks recognized this 

62 



The Joy of Life. 

saving quality in what some might 
call mere temporal delight, or the 
common joy of living. He regarded 
it as one of the fine, redeeming ex- 
periences of life. I remember a pas- 
sage in one of his sermons that for a 
time puzzled me and almost aroused 
a mental protest. But when I came 
back to it, after an experience of 
abiding joy that made simple living 
seem infinitely sweet, the thought be- 
came luminous, and took its place 
among my deepest and most welcome 
convictions. The passage is this: 
"The great joy is just to be alive. 
The fact of life is greater than what 
is done with it." 

This utterance at first seemed to 
me strange and inexplicable, as it 
would, I think, to any one who lias 

not awakened to the true significance 
63 



The Heritage of Life. 

of the joy of right living. This is 
the great joy — to be normally alive 
as a child of God, to be uniformlv 
happy because in harmony with Him 
and perpetually conscious of His 
love. To have life resolve itself into 
such a fact as this is the great thing, 
greater than any specific thing one 
can do with life. To have one's soul 
suffused with peace, constantly, per- 
manently — that, I take it, is what 
Bishop Brooks meant by the "fact of 
life;" and that wholeness of life is 
really a greater, more significant 
thing than specific achievements of 
one kind or another. 

The broad truth is that life itself, 
life in its entirety, is a greater and 
finer thing than any single manifes- 
tation of life. To know that redemp- 



64 



The Joy of Life. 

tive joy of living, that peace and rap- 
ture that spring from wholeness of 
heart and perfect harmony with 
God, is, after all, of more account 
than the particular work in life to 
which one turns his hand. It is a 
greater thing to know the essential 
and abiding joy of life than to know 
the satisfaction of being a great 
poet, a great preacher, or a great 
scientist. 

This profound truth — which is 
missed or but dimly apprehended by 
so many — imparts a new dignity and 
sweetness to the average life. It 
confers upon the soul that is glad 
with the wholesome joy of right liv- 
ing, the distinction of knowing and 
proving what is best worth while. It 
makes the so-called "common" life 



65 



The Heritage of Life. 

that is sane and whole and well- 
rounded, the type of life that really 
counts for most. 

This is surely an ennobling and in- 
spiring theory of life. It raises most 
of us to the possible plane of a dig- 
nity that is too often considered the 
heritage only of those capable of 
great achievements along special 
lines. It exalts the every-day man 
and woman; and that, as Phillips 
Brooks well knew, is the gospel that 
is going to save humanity, that is go- 
ing to keep the average individual 
from moral and spiritual retrogres- 
sion. As Bishop Brooks said to the 
poor washerwoman who objected, 
when he offered her Trinity Church 
for her daughter to be married in, 
"It is n't for the likes of me, 5 ' "Yes, it 

is for the likes of you, and the likes of 

66 



The Joy of Life. 

me, and the likes of everybody." So 
the true grandeur of life, for that 
great seer of saving truth, was for the 
likes of you, and the likes of me, and 
the likes of everybody. That was his 
message, the heart of his preaching. 
He was distinctively, among preach- 
ers, the exalter of the average indi- 
vidual. His doctrine was that the 
highest plane of life is that upon 
which the many may stand. 

A deep and abiding joy in life, 
then, may safely be accepted as an 
indication of oneness of spirit with 
God, and therefore of the fact that 
one has grasped the real significance 
of man's existence on earth. In 
other words, the great fact is not 
what one does, but in what spirit, and 
with what result upon his own con- 
sciousness and character, he does 
67 



The Heritage of Life. 

what his hand or his brain finds to do. 
Right things done in the right spirit 
render the only real and profound 
happiness possible in this world. If 
one has this consciousness, he is not 
only salvable but is being saved. That 
is the reason why our happiness is 
sometimes so exalting, so thrilling, so 
prophetic. It is the evidence of the 
soul's harmony with what is divine 
and immortal, and therefore of its 
essential immortality. 



68 



C^e i^aHotueD Commonplace, 

"The everlasting routine," "the 
perpetual grind," "this constant 
traveling in a rut," "pegging away 
at the old task" — how familiar such 
expressions are, and how commonly 
they voice the discontent of people 
who can not find anything more se- 
rious or distressing to complain about 
than the mere sameness of their days ! 
We find all classes and all grades of 
men complaining about the monoto- 
nies of life. Even great men, doing 
a great work, are apt to speak of their 
time as consumed by weary and unin- 
teresting routine. Lives whichHhe 
more humble of us picture as full of 
69 



The Heritage of Life. 

interest and variety and inspiration, 
are how often declared by those who 
are living them to be wearisomely 
dull and monotonous! What is 
wrong with men and women in gen- 
eral, that they should find life so 
cursed with sameness and tameness 
and lack of that fresh delight and 
buoyancy of service which is so essen- 
tial to best achievement? 

The trouble seems to be that we do 
not rightly interpret and value repe- 
titiousness or sameness in life as an 
element conducive to truest happi- 
ness as well as largest success. It is 
in the so-called monotonies of life, 
did we but realize it, that the greater 
part of the quiet, deep, smoothly-flow- 
ing happiness of life consists. Some 
one has expressed this thought of the 

joy of the smooth routine of life in 

70 



The Hallowed Commonplace. 

a most happy phrase — "the dear 
every-dayness of life." And when 
one thinks of the matter reasonably 
and candidly, is it not true that the 
sense of peace and safety and mas- 
tery and wontedness that attaches to 
the routine of our days is, or should 
be, one of the deepest sources of per- 
sonal satisfaction? The task that we 
are accustomed to, and that we per- 
form with practiced ease and accu- 
racy; the duties that we approach 
with a full understanding of their 
requirements and method of per- 
formance; the daily events so like 
one another as to be free from shock 
and strain; the smooth and at the 
same time effective alternation of 
toil and rest, thinking and perform- 
ing, — are not these repetitious ex- 
periences of daily life full of a serene 
71 



The Heritage of Life. 

satisfaction and comfort, if we only 
estimate them as we ought? Let a 
few days of ordinary life be inter- 
rupted by unwonted experiences, 
even such as seem pleasurable in 
anticipation, and how glad we are to 
get back again to the accustomed rut ! 
The sense of strain and confusion 
disappears when we resume our 
wonted routine, and we breathe a 
sigh of restful content as we take up 
the old round of familiar duties. 

And still more, if the experiences 
that have broken in upon the monot- 
ony of life are of distressing or exact- 
ing sort — sickness, suspense, a trying 
ordeal of any kind, — what grateful, 
what blessed relief to return to the 
dear every-dayness of life ! We won- 
der how we could ever have grumbled 

over it. How could it ever have 

72 



The Hallowed Commonplace. 

seemed to us anything but the only 
serene and happy path for our feet 
to pursue? 

The remedy for dissatisfaction 
with the routine of life seems to be 
simple enough — a temporary suspen- 
sion of the routine, with all the spe- 
cial and unwonted strain that such 
a departure from one's accustomed 
habits implies. We have only to dis- 
cover and re-discover thus in personal 
experience how dear the every-day- 
ness of life actually is, in order to be 
weaned from the dissatisfaction and 
grumbling that are so unworthy and 
so unbecoming. By thus attaining 
the right view-point we shall get rid 
of the notion that there is anything 
regrettable, anything that ought to 
be changed, in God's appointment of 

routine as the normal condition of 
73 



The Heritage of Life. 

life. We shall see clearly that it is 
the very condition which is, on the 
whole, productive of the greatest 
measure of peace and happiness. 
Out of no other ordering of life 
could so much real and permanent 
happiness proceed. 

And if the routine of life is the 
condition of its highest average of 
happiness, it is even more evidently 
the condition of life's highest aver- 
age of achievement. In no other 
way than by performing the same 
kind of tasks over and over again, 
day after day, can the individual or 
the race accomplish the greatest 
amount of enduring work. This in 
itself should be an added cause for 
rejoicing in the monotonies of life. 
If we accomplish more by following 
the rut that in any other way, we 
74 



The Hallowed Commonplace. 

ought to be glad that our appointed 
pathways fall into ruts. There is, 
then, still another satisfaction be- 
sides the peace and ease of the rut — 
the satisfaction of knowing that we 
are thus realizing our highest possi- 
bilities as workers, as contributors to 
the progress of the race. 

How ungracious to grumble at 
the very wisest provision which God 
has made both for our happiness and 
our usefulness ! Of all the paths that 
strike across the world, there is none, 
after all, so pleasant and so profit- 
able as the commonplace rut. Abol- 
ish it, and you will have a world full 
of confused, erratic, unhappy, in- 
effectual men and women — a human 
chaos. Blessed indeed are the habit- 
ual things, the things that regulate 
conduct, and concentrate effort, and 
75 



The Heritage of Life. 

fill our days with that quiet, lasting 
happiness which is the most precious 
heritage of human experience. 

&. j& ;&. j4» ik. 

9T? Jfc Tft Tpr 7fc 

Bonaventura, "the Seraphic Doc- 
tor," wrote in an inspired moment 
what has been called his "golden sen- 
tence" — golden, not in a rhetorical 
sense, because of any charm of lan- 
guage or beauty of figure, but 
golden in its depth of insight, its 
ability to stand the test of what Car- 
lyle calls "the everlasting yea." The 
enduring truth uttered by the great 
Italian theologian was this: "The 
best preparation of a religious man 
is to do common things in a perfect 
manner." 

Here is a philosophy of personal 
religion, as we say, "in a nutshell" — 
the quintessence of all that is essen- 
76 . 



The Hallowed Commonplace. 

tial and practical. It is worthy to 
stand next to Christ's summary of 
Christian duty: "Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
mind. This is the first and great 
commandment. And the second is 
like unto it: Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself. On these two 
commandments hang all the law and 
the prophets." 

Bonaventura's "golden sentence" 
is, in a way, supplementary to 
Christ's beautiful compendium of 
the law. Christ emphasizes the per- 
fect relation to persons; Bonaven- 
tura emphasizes the perfect relation 
to things. To be sure, the relation to 
things, closely analyzed, may be said 
to be included by the relation to per- 
sons, since, unless a man utterly iso- 
77 



The Heritage of Life. 

lates himself and becomes a hermit, 
he will find that his approach to 
things is nearly always by way of 
persons. Yet it is well to put a little 
added emphasis upon things in them- 
selves, as Bonaventura does, that we 
may be impressed by their inherent 
sacredness. Common things espe- 
cially we are apt to consider as in- 
different, as moral neuters, so to 
speak, with no positive religious 
character of their own. The every- 
day duty, the thing that seems to per- 
tain to the secular life alone, we are 
apt to ignore on its religious or 
sacred side. Our relation to persons 
— to God, to fellowman — we strenu- 
ously hold sacred. But there would 
seem to be serious need of calling the 
attention of Christian men and 
women to the fact that the common- 
78 



The Hallowed Commonplace. 

place, indirectly personal relations of 
every day are sacred too, with a re- 
ligious significance of their own, and 
that, according as we enter upon 
them and conduct them with the 
Christian spirit, or fail to hallow 
them, we are fulfilling or defeating 
God's purpose with respect to these 
relations. 

You can not draw any lines what- 
ever when you are dealing with the 
religious life. There are no prov- 
inces outside of it. It covers the 
equator and the poles, and thrusts 
its roots into the core, of the world of 
personality. If it does not go 
through and through a man, it does 
not go into him at all. That is the 
nature of religion; it is as thorough- 
going, as permeating, as life itself. 
It pulses into and suffuses the least 
79 



The Heritage of Life. 

things— as the life-blood warms the 
very finger-tips — and says: "These 
are mine; these are sacred things. 
Make them so." Nothing is too 
small or remote to have a vital reli- 
gious significance. If we really and 
truly believe that, we will make an 
end of drawing those futile lines be- 
tween what we call secular and reli- 
gious, commonplace and sacred. 
There are no such distinctions in the 
new life which the Lord Jesus Christ 
brought into the world. Like His 
own garment, that robe of life is all 
one piece, seamless, inseparable; and 
every thread that enters it runs 
straight through warp or woof, and 
intertwines with every other thread 
to form the entire fabric of char* 
acter. 



80 



C^e lvalue of €>bgtacle& 

Some people always lose heart 
when they come to an obstacle. 
They turn squarely around, and say, 
"O well, that puts an end to this 
scheme. It does seem a pity that I 
can't take hold of anything with- 
out being balked!" The trouble is, 
that most persons do not understand 
the true nature of an obstacle. They 
look upon it as something final, 
immovable, insurmountable. They 
seem to consider that it is something 
intended by a frowning Providence 
to put a stop to the particular thing 
which they are doing. Now, thi^is 
something quite contrary to the true 
6 81 



The Heritage of Life. 

purpose and economy of obstacles. 
They are not intended to balk effort, 
but to increase energy. 

A stream of water set back by a 
dam may illustrate the nature and 
purpose of an obstacle. It is some- 
thing whose function is to pile up and 
amass and concentrate energy. It is 
something to climb upon and dash 
over with ten times augmented force. 
Instead of regarding the obstacle as 
a discouragement and a sign that we 
are working in the wrong direction, 
we ought to look upon it as a provi- 
dential opportunity — an opportunity 
to test and to augment strength of 
purpose ; an opportunity to rise to the 
level of higher power; an opportu- 
nity to gather new resource and ex- 
pand to wider channels of useful- 
ness. 

82 



The Value of Obstacles. 

How often has the obstacle, at- 
tacked and surmounted, broadened a 
man's outlook upon what is possi- 
ble for him to do I How many great 
and good enterprises have widened 
and deepened in scope and power by 
being for the time obstructed and 
delayed! Wonderful is the power of 
the obstacle to open men's eyes to the 
real possibilities of the thing they 
have undertaken. Wonderful is the 
inspiring power of the obstacle — its 
power to expand vision and spur 
energy. Most wonderful of all is the 
dynamic, the strengthening power of 
the obstacle — its power to reinforce 
the strength that assails it, and aug- 
ment the resources that are gathered 
against it. 

We rise only by that which op- 
poses. We strengthen only by that 
83 



The Heritage of Life. 

which antagonizes. Opposition is the 
life of endeavor. The man who suc- 
ceeds is the man who makes obstacles 
the steps of his ladder. 

zV. ite. i&e. &. lis. 

7fr "9[? Tpr yf? ?& 

George Macdonald makes one of 
his characters say, "Strange how 
things will not go up unless you hold 
them down!" This is true not only 
of kites, but of many other things 
as well. There must be resistance, in 
order to stimulate effort and make it 
most effective — a principle that ap- 
plies to all sorts of things that have 
"go" in them. The horse strikes his 
best and most staying gait when he 
is firmly held in by the reins. The 
yacht skims swiftly across the waves 
only when restrained by sheet-rope 
and rudder. If the skipper aban- 
dons control of these for a minute, 
84 . 



The Value of Obstacles. 

the yacht lies wallowing in the 
trough, with flapping sail — a help- 
less and lifeless thing. The locomo- 
tive has to be confined to its narrow 
path of steel, or its magnificent burst 
of speed would be converted into a 
lame, impotent bumping over the 
ground, and a final smash-up. Some 
kind of obstacle, in the way of re- 
straint, or friction, or opposition, 
seems to be required to make specific 
mechanical force effective in the 
highest degree. 

Human beings are even more sub- 
ject than inanimate things to the 
workings of this peculiar principle. 
As a rule, the things we do that really 
amount to something are things in 
the doing of which we have been 
stimulated by some kind of opposi- 
tion. Nothing is of more vital value 
85 



The Heritage of Life. 

to an earnest spirit than the econom- 
ics of obstacles. 

Take poverty, for instance. What 
grand things poverty has done for 
many an aspiring young man and 
woman, or, rather, has enabled them 
to do! The struggle against adverse 
circumstances has called out and de- 
veloped every power and resource 
at their command. It has proved to 
be a kind of moral and intellectual 
gymnastics, toning up the whole be- 
ing, raising it to the level of its high- 
est powers and possibilities. Money 
is like a carriage that carries one 
easily over certain stages of one's 
journey, but at the expense of flabby 
muscles and a sluggish circulation. 
Let poverty compel one to walk stur- 
dily over the same ground, and how 
much better conditioned he will be 
86 



The Value of Obstacles. 

for the real mountain-climbing of 
life, where there is no roadway for 

carriages ! 

***** 

The moral disciplines of life, too, 
are tonic and stimulating. Trials, 
temptations, disappointments — all 
these are helps instead of hindrances, 
if one uses them rightly. They not 
only test the fiber of character, but 
strengthen it. Every conquered 
temptation represents a new fund of 
moral energy. Every trial endured 
and weathered in the right spirit 
makes a soul nobler and stronger 
than it was before. 

Indeed, is not stimulus the real and 
characteristic function of every ob- 
stacle? Obstacles were not meant to 
discourage men and women, butx to 
rouse and develop. Send a young 
87 



The Heritage of Life. 

man, who knew nothing about the 
apparatus, into a gymnasium, and he 
would be likely to stumble and fall 
over some things that were actually 
intended to keep the body upright 
and well-balanced and supple. That 
would not be the fault of the appa- 
ratus or its designer, but of the igno- 
rant, unpracticed young man. So 
with life. Many of us seem to be ig- 
norant of the real value and meaning 
of its experiences, particularly its 
hard experiences. We make stum- 
bling-blocks of the very things that 
God intended to have us climb by and 
grow by. That is not life's fault, 
nor God's fault; it is our own fault. 
We often seem to be blind to the 
economic function of obstacles. 
Everything that opposes us or causes 
friction we consider a hindrance and 
88 



The Value of Obstacles. 

a drawback. We will not soar up, 
while the kite-string makes that pos- 
sible by holding us against the wind. 
We will not run, while the rein 
steadies and restrains us that we may 
run well. 

What a sad mistake this is — not 
to know, not to believe in, the value 
of obstacles as vital stimulants and 
helps! Whoever cherishes such a 
conception of the hard things of life 
is destined to defeat and disappoint- 
ment. His carriage of ease may 
carry him to the foot of the Hill Dif- 
ficulty, but no further. 



89 



Ho&e t^e ape* of Ufa 

One of the most beautiful concep- 
tions ever expressed in the language 
of architecture is embodied in the 
construction of a famous Italian 
cathedral. To enter this magnificent 
structure one must pass through two 
vestibules, each with an arched door- 
way. Over the first door is carved a 
wreath of roses, typifying the en- 
trance to the vestibule of pleasure. 
Over the doorway to the second ves- 
tibule, which is larger than the first, 
is carved a cross, to indicate that this 
is the gateway to suffering. When 
one passes through this second ves- 
tibule, and enters by another door 
90 



Love the Apex of Life. 

the grand rose-windowed and mar- 
ble-pillared cathedral itself, the first 
thing that meets the eye, at the apex 
of the magnificent arch above the 
altar, is a circle twined with sprays 
of amaranth, enclosing the words 
"Eternal Love." 

The beautiful thought of the ar- 
chitect, thus uttered in stone, sinks 
into the mind of the beholder with 
touching effect. This grand cathe- 
dral, one perceives , is intended to 
represent the meaning of life with its 
varied and contrasted experiences. 
Joy comes first, youthful, radiant, 
unalloyed; but it is only for a little 
while. 

The vestibule of the rose-wreath is 

small and narrow. Soon we pass 

through it and enter the gateway ^>f 

suffering, of self-denial, of sacrifice, 

91 



The Heritage of Life. 

of burden-bearing. This is the 
larger of the two rooms, the two ex- 
periences through which we must 
pass before life's full meaning is re- 
vealed to us. More of life is under 
the cross than under the wreath. 
Humanity bears the cross longer, 
and with a deeper consciousness of 
its significance, than it wears the 
wreath. Even the happiest soul 
knows more of suffering and sacri- 
fice than of pure enjoyment. 

But both the joy and the suffering 
of earth are merely introductory and 
preparatory. Sorrow, as well as joy, 
endureth but for a season. In a little 
while we have passed through the 
vestibules of life, and the glory of its 
larger, its eternal meaning flashes 
upon us: Eternal love! — that is the 
purpose, the glory, the goal of our 
92 



Love the Apex of Life. 

being. A little earthly joy first, as 
a hint of what heaven's supremer 
bliss may be. A little suffering — not 
so very much, after all, except as 
compared with our joy — and then, 
through these transitory, prepar- 
atory experiences, we come to under- 
stand the meaning of eternal love 
and eternal life, and are ready to 
enter the temple not made with 
hands and stand in the light of the 
great rose-window above the altar. 
A true and beautiful conception of 
life indeed is this, expressed in endur- 
ing stone. No worshiper with open 
eyes and discerning soul can pass 
through those two vestibules, and 
then enter the impressive nave be- 
yond, without carrying away in his 
mind and heart a clearer conception, 
and a more joyful and triumphant 
93 



The Heritage of Life. 

feeling, of the sweetness and beauty 
and significance of earthly experience 
in its relation to the life of heaven. 
Joy is for a little while ; sorrow is for 
a little while; yet both are real, both 
are necessary, both are hallowed. 
Both have a distinct and close rela- 
tion to the life beyond the grave. 
Both, if we use them rightly, are in- 
troductory to the eternal life of love. 
It would not be best for us to enter 
the temple of eternal love at once. 
We could not do so reverently and 
in the right spirit, any more than the 
wayfarer could step immediately into 
the cathedral in the mood and spirit 
of the worshiper. We need these 
vestibules, these narrow entrance 
ways, these introductory and prepar- 
atory experiences. They are a part 
of the temple of life; for God, the 
94 



Love the Apex of Life. 

Divine Architect, has wrought them 
into His plan. 

j& 2k. ite. ite. J& 

7f? ^ ^r ?ff tic 

Christ analyzed all religion into 
duties to God and to neighbor; and 
if we examine the operations of our 
own spiritual natures, we shall find 
that all their processes and activities 
fall under the one or the other of 
these relations. Every thought and 
every act proceeding out of and be- 
yond self, and therefore having rela- 
tions with an environment, is either 
God-ward or neighbor-ward. 

Now, to be in harmony with both 
sides of our spiritual environment is 
spiritual peace. It is the condition 
of knowing with the profoundest 
certainty — a certainty infinitely 
deeper than that established by any 
mere logical process — that the soul 
95 



The Heritage of Life. 

is discharging its true function in the 
grand economy of existence; that it 
is one with the Infinite Purpose, and 
therefore one with the Eternal Good. 
Nothing is more impossible than to 
shake the confidence or destroy the 
happiness of a soul that feels itself 
to be at peace with God and man. 

And the sole condition of this 
harmony with spiritual environment 
is love — love God-ward and love 
man-ward. He who loves God will 
be at such peace with Him that all 
experience — life's discipline of what- 
ever sort — will fall in with a divine 
order as beautiful and as necessary 
as the material order of the planets. 
Such a soul will ever rejoice in God's 
dealings. Like a brook, it will make 
its sweetest music over the roughest 
stones. Whatever happens will be 
96 



Lote the Apex of Life. 

best, because it is God's choosing. 
And so love on the God-ward side 
of the soul brings a peace which 
nothing can cloud. It is this sense of 
harmony with the Divine, and this 
alone, that enables the human soul 
to rise superior to the merely tem- 
poral significance and bearing of any 
experience, to interpret it in the 
light of Providence, and set it sweetly 
to the music of the larger purpose. 
But man must also love his brother 
man — love him genuinely, love him 
unselfishly — if he would taste that 
peace which the world can neither 
give nor take away. And, indeed, if 
one but love God truly, how can he 
help loving his brother man truly 
also? For the very essence of the 
love of God is the spirit of universal 
love. If we can not love God with- 
7 97 



The Heritage of Life. 

out loving the very daisy which He 
has made and clothed with more than 
regal beauty (and no man truly loves 
God who does not love His good 
works), how can we fail to love the 
being whom He has made in His own 
image, and into whom He has 
breathed the breath of His own eter- 
nal life and His own pure and holy 
Spirit? The love of man for man 
ought to be such a consuming white 
fire and passion of love that it should 
burn utterly away the miserable love 
of self. We ought all of us to so 
feel, as God feels toward suffering 
and sin, that we should be willing to 
make an altar of what we falsely 
call personal welfare, and burn upon 
it the sacrifice of devotion to our 
brothers. This is the love which 

brings that perfect peace upon the 

98 



Love the Apex of Life. 

man-ward side of our environment. 
Love to God including love for man, 
and devotion to God finding its ex- 
pression in complete and unselfish 
service of mankind, — these are the 
conditions of the peaceful soul; 
these are the impregnable fortifica- 
tions behind which every man may- 
intrench himself against the assaults 
of doubt and apprehension, sure that 
so long as he lives in perfect har- 
mony with his entire spiritual en- 
vironment, nothing can come to him, 
here or there, now or then, but the 
highest good and the purest felicity. 



99 



^Regeneration* 

One day an accident happened 
in the laboratory of the celebrated 
chemist, Faraday. A workman 
knocked a silver cup into a jar of 
strong acid. In a very short time 
the cup entirely disappeared, being 
dissolved in the acid as sugar is dis- 
solved in water. One after another 
the workmen gathered around, and 
regretfully watched the melting of 
the beautiful cup. All said that it 
was utterly lost, that no particle of 
the silver could ever be recovered. 
But Faraday, being informed of the 
accident, brought some chemical 
mixture and poured it into the jar. 
100 



Regeneration. 

Gradually every particle of the sil- 
ver was precipitated to the bottom, 
and at length the great chemist 
drained off the acid and took out the 
silver, now a shapeless mass. He 
sent the lump of metal to the silver- 
smith who had made the cup, and in 
a few days it came back, restored to 
its former shape and beauty, a won- 
der and delight to the workmen who 
had watched its apparent destruc- 
tion. 

How perfect, how beautiful, the 
correspondence of this incident with 
the method of God in restoring a 
human soul! The soul, like the cup, 
falls into the devouring, disintegrat- 
ing, dissolving acid of sin. One and 
another of its fellow-mortals gather 
round and say: 'Ah! that soul x is 
ruined forever. There is no salva- 
101 



The Heritage of Life. 

tion for it. It is utterly consumed by 
sin.'' And so they would leave it 
there to perish. But the Divine 
Chemist comes, and looks pityingly 
into the jar of life, and drops into 
it His marvelous, restoring, pardon- 
ing grace in Jesus Christ. Then, 
under that potent influence, the 
broken, disintegrated soul slowly 
gathers itself together in a distorted 
mass, the mere crude materials of its 
former character. There it lies, all 
shapeless, helpless, crude, like spirit- 
ual ore. What a contrast to its once 
delicate beauty and shapeliness ! But 
He who saved the precious metal 
can also restore the beautiful cup. 
He is both the chemist and the silver- 
smith. In His divine thought He 
holds the image of the cup, and 

shall He not be able to beat and ham- 

102 



Regeneration. 

mer the precious metal once more 
into the semblance of the forfeited 
design? Behold, the restored cup! 
Behold, the redeemed and forgiven 
soul ! Out of that corroding, devour- 
ing acid of sin it comes again, recre- 
ated, beautiful, and consecrated, a 
wonder and a joy to those who 
thought it irrevocably lost. 

Let there be no despair in our 
hearts because of this world full of 
sin, this terrible, life-long, aggres- 
sive, relentless environment that, like 
the acid in the jar, is forever thirst- 
ing to consume our souls. God looks 
into the jar and sees the cup dissolv- 
ing, but He looks not in anger, not in 
helplessness, not in despair. His 
eyes are full of love and pity, and 
His heart is full of help and hope and 

resource. He will not let the soul 

103 



The Heritage of Life. 

that is overpowered by sin go down 
to destruction. He can save it, even 
unto the uttermost. "My grace," 
He says, "is sufficient for thee," suf- 
ficient unto restoration, sufficient 
unto salvation, sufficient unto eternal 
triumph over sin and death and 
shame. How holy, how consecrated, 
should be the soul saved by God 
through the very sacrifice and agony 
of His own beloved Son. Should it 
not stand in the house beautiful, in 
the heavenly mansion, like a pure and 
shining cup, sanctified and clean, 
that has twice passed through the 
hands of the patient Designer, and 
longs to be f orevermore a chalice of 

His love? 

# * # # * 

In the last analysis there is only 

one thing, after all, of which a hu- 

104 



Regeneration. 

man being is afraid, and that is his 
own past life, with its accruing re- 
sults. Most men are not really 
afraid of death per se, or of pain, 
or of any catastrophe which is likely 
to befall them. These facts are 
proven a thousand times a day. 
Recklessness and indifference are far 
more prevalent than cowardice and 
dread. But there is hardly a man or 
woman in the world who does not 
look back with more or less of appre- 
hension and trembling upon past life 
as registered in the individual con- 
sciousness. The world may not un- 
derstand; the world may even ac- 
count them saints from infancy; but 
they know how God looks upon them, 
and how they look upon themselves. 
How rare — how almost inhumanly 
105 



The Heritage of Life. 

rare — is the soul that has no haunting 
past! 

To every soul pondering the prob- 
lem of future life — whether that 
soul be avowedly Christian or not — 
the chance of salvation seems to rest 
upon the righting, in some way, 
of a condemning past. So long 
as that hangs about a man's neck 
like a millstone, there is no pos- 
sible tendency for him, in time or 
eternity, but down, down, forever 
down. Somehow that incubus must 
be thrown off; somehow the past 
must be washed out or made right 
before any man can be saved. This 
is the instinctive conviction of the 
race, no matter what may be the 
form of its religious, or irreligious, 
belief. Superstition must even have 
its sacrifices made and its masses 
106 



Regeneration. 

sung for the soul that has already 
passed to its account. On all hands 
men are crying out, and striving, 
and being cried and striven for, to 
get rid of their own accusing past. 
It is to this vast, troubled, yearn- 
ing multitude that Jesus Christ 
comes with His precious message of 
hope. What does He say to the sin- 
burdened, sin-haunted soul? The 
message is strangely brief and sim- 
ple, yet how marvelously sweet and 
sufficient: "Come unto me, all ye 
that labor and are heavy-laden, and 
I will give you rest." The invitation 
is personal and direct. We are 
simply to come and cast the burden 
of our guilt upon Him, and He will 
personally assume it, and forever re- 
move it from us, and we shall be 

wholly regenerated. The solution of 

107 



The Heritage of Life. 

the whole casuistical problem is so 
simple, when this light of perfect 
love falls upon it ! By reason of His 
Divine nature Christ has perfect 
moral right and power to assume 
your sin-burden and mine — just as 
much right as your creditor has to 
assume or remit your debt to him. 
We have sinned against Christ, and 
He, and He alone, can un-sin us. 

Where, in all the history of hu- 
man thought, is there so sure and 
logical an answer to the universal 
problem, "How shall a man escape 
his condemning past?" None was 
ever offered that brought the peace 
and assurance of Christ's personal 
invitation and promise. O, all ye 
who are laboring under the dread 
and discouragement of past sin, un- 
f orgiven, come and taste the sweet, 
108 



Regeneration. 

immediate peace of the Divine for- 
giveness! There is no other escape 
from this haunting sense of con- 
demnation for soul-recorded evil. 
There is no other spiritual peace save 
the peace of God in Christ. In vain 
may men labor to atone for past ill 
deeds and thoughts by present virtue. 
In vain may they strive to reason 
God, and a future, and a judgment, 
out of the universe. A thought, a 
consciousness, a premonition, will un- 
ceasingly torment them; and they 
will know that it is not well with 
them unless they are forgiven. No 
soul ever got rid of its haunting past 
until it yielded it up to the loving, 

burden-bearing Son of God. 

■& & & $? $? 

Before the human soul comes to 
the consciousness of its new birth it 

109 



The Heritage of Life. 

is like a ship tossed in a storm. Life, 
with its rough experiences, its blind- 
ing and perplexing troubles, its 
storms of anxieties, disappointments, 
distresses, sins, seems ready to over- 
whelm us. We are tossed and driven 
we know not whither, for we are 
surrounded by darkness and uncer- 
tainty. Then the loving Fatherhood 
of God suddenly reveals itself to us, 
and in a moment's space we glide out 
of the storm into the haven, out of 
distress into peace, out of peril into 
safety, out of bewilderment and per- 
plexity into sweet assurance. That 
is regeneration. When a soul ex- 
periences this sudden, joyful feeling 
of rescue from the turmoil and 
uncertainty and purposelessness of 
life, it is born anew. God has 

received it unto Himself through 

110 



Regeneration. 

Christ, as the haven under the moun- 
tain receives the storm-tossed ship. 
How often we hear the question 
asked, especially by young Chris- 
tians: "How am I to know that I 
have been born again? I want some 
assurance that Christ has really come 
into my life and made me His." The 
one sufficient answer to such a ques- 
tion is to be found in the soul's own 
inner feeling. Has there come into 
life a new, sweet, all-sufficing sense 
of peace and safety? Does the old 
life, with its sins, its soul-struggles, 
its storms of doubt and distrust and 
perplexity, seem suddenly far away 
and stripped of its former dread? 
Have faith and trust and hope and 
joy taken the place of uncertainty 
and fear and spiritual agony? Then 
the soul may be sure that it has found 
111 



The Heritage of Life. 

the way to Christ. We must know 
that we are saved, just as we know 
when the storm is left and the haven 
reached. Such an exuberant joy of 
contrast, of relief, of absolute safety 
and peace, will take possession of our 
hearts, that nothing can longer dis- 
may or affright us. 



112 



C^e Long petgpectfte* 

We are sent into this world to 
learn the meaning of life. The pres- 
ent stage of existence is not, and 
never has been, satisfying to a single 
human soul. Its best conditions fail 
to answer the deeper needs of man. 
Something, we feel, lies beneath and 
beyond this mystery of birth and toil 
and decay and death; something 
which we are to lay hold of, however 
imperfectly, as the secret of human 
life. And this partial solution, if we 
so regard it, of the mystery into 
which w r e are ushered here in this 
world, constitutes, according as we 
apprehend it, the meaning of life. 

If there is anything which su- 
8 113 



The Heritage of Life. 

premely appeals to the human heart, 
it is the pathos of incompleteness. 
Man must needs leave the best that 
is in him unexpressed. Always it is 
the last touch, the crowning achieve- 
ment, that fails. No successful man 
ever died content with his success. 
There is so much beyond that re- 
mains unrealized! All that he has 
accomplished seems but preliminary 
to that which alone is worth accom- 
plishing. Only one Being who ever 
dwelt upon earth could say, as the 
shadows of death gathered about 
Him, "It is finished" For all others 
life goes on unfinished. It is the age- 
long sorrow of humanity — the sor- 
row of incompleteness. The more we 
seem to win, the more we are con- 
scious of losing. Life 

" To a Pythian height dilates us," 
114 



The Long Perspective. 

only to cast us down at last to pro- 
founder depths. 

Inexpressibly sad would be the pa- 
thos of incompleteness did we not 
trust that the arc of life which is 
broken here will be completed in 
heaven; that yonder all high and 
noble hopes and yearnings shall be 
fulfilled, all achievements crowned, 
all ideals realized. Heaven — is it not 
earth's sequel, the second volume of 
God's great book of lif e, in w^hich all 
the mysteries are solved, all the con- 
fusions righted, all the misconcep- 
tions dispelled, all the fragmentary 
episodes brought into harmony with 
the one great controlling motive, 
all the beginnings of noble work 
crowned with noble fulfillment, all 
the sorrows transformed into joys, 
and all the losses turned to richest 
115 



The Heritage of Life, 

gains? Truly, with heaven to fulfill 
earth's broken promises, what seems 
to us like the pathos of incomplete- 
ness is only a momentary sadness 
at the laying down of imperfect 
achievement here, to take up perfect 

achievement there. 

# * ^ # # 

Faith looks forward, and sees this 
perspective of eternity, in which so 
many strange, inexplicable things of 
the present life are to be adjusted 
and made clear. She knows that the 
present can not explain itself, and 
she is willing to wait until the full- 
ness of time and of eternity reveals 
all things in their proper relations. 
The time is coming when we shall 
understand the mysteries of life. 

But we must wait. We must look 
into the long perspective, and say, 

116 



The Long Perspective. 

"Lord, though I can not see, I be- 
lieve." It is a hard requirement, per- 
haps; but it is just, it is necessary. 
God has a long work to do, longer 
than art, longer than life. Our intel- 
ligences have not yet reached that 
point in the grand evolutionary pro- 
cess where we can see the length of 
God's purpose. Our spiritual eye is 
still, like our physical eye, holden. 
Scientists tell us that, even under 
most favorable conditions, we can 
only see about one hundred and fifty 
miles from point to point of the 
earth's surface. Think of that, com- 
pared with the immensity of the 
planet! And then think of the still 
more restricted spiritual eye of man, 
compared with the immensity of 
God's universe-embracing plan. 
It is indeed a small and blind and 
117 



The Heritage of Life. 

faithless thing to complain of God's 
dealings with us in this present life. 
How God must pity our querulous- 
ness and impatience! O for a more 
reverently abiding consciousness of 
that grand background of eternity! 
God help us to be more patient, more 
humble, more trustful, so that, as we 
go forward in the ascending scale of 
intelligence and spiritual insight, our 
larger outlook may never make us 
ashamed of the former smallness of 
our faith. 

Our duty is to live and strive as if 
the mere accident of physical death 
had never interrupted the joyful con- 
tinuity of human service. There has 
come into the thought of the age a 
noble conception of what this present 
life is for. According to the old 
118 



The Long Perspective. 

theology and the old preaching, it 
was to prepare men for death. But 
the new spiritual interpretation says : 
"Nay, life is to prepare us for life. 
We are not to consider its mission 
performed when it has brought us 
into a right attitude concerning 
Christ and salvation — so that, so far 
as the future is concerned, we might 
as well die then. Life is inexpress- 
ibly sacred and significant up to its 
very last moment of earthly duration, 
because it is the continuous and pro- 
gressive preparation for a larger and 
nobler life to come." 

Life for life — not life for death — 
that is the grander message of the 
religion of to-day. It is not as well 
for you, hereafter, if you merely ac- 
cept Christ and salvation in tljis 
w T orld, and wait for heaven in which 
119 



The Heritage of Life. 

to climb your Pisgah-heights of 
spiritual growth and blessedness. 
Begin the heavenly life now. That 
is the nobler, grander, wiser message 
of the preacher to-day. Life is not 
given you to prepare for death, any 
more than day is given you to pre- 
pare for night. You do not work 
that you may sleep; you sleep that 
you may work. 

Let us think of each hour of pres- 
ent existence as so much added hold 
upon eternal, progressive life. Let 
us think of each deed as the begin- 
ning of an endless series of deeds of 
kindred nature — life leading up to 
life, unbroken, homogeneous, one in 
purpose, in meaning, in power. 
Merely accepting salvation is no 
more what this life was given us for, 
than just saying, "I will," is the 
120 



The Loxg Perspective. 

keeping and consummation of the 
moral law. Life then, life now, life 
forever, is still a preparation for 
life. There is no such thing as spir- 
itual inertia in the universe. Christ 
says, "Come," but after that He says, 
"Go — go ye into the whole world;" 
and so by noble, helpful living pre- 
pare, not for the hour of death, but 
for the aeon of celestial service which 
is to come. 



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OCT 11 ISO? 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2005 

PreservafionTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PA^ '■ -RVATION 

111 Thomson Park Onve 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



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